[xubuntu-users] Chrome opens mailto links in itself instead of mailer

[Peter Flynn]

Any time I click on a mailto link in a web page using Chrome, it opens a
new Chrome window instead of opening my mailer (Thunderbird).

In System Settings » Default Applications, Mail *is* set to Thunderbird,
and I can't find anywhere inside Chrome to specify what used to be
called "helper applications" in other browsers.

There appears to be a program called xdg-open, which (according to its
skeletal man page) is supposed to...

   "open a file or URL in the user's preferred application. If a URL is
    provided the URL will be opened in the user's preferred web
    browser. If a file is provided the file will be opened in the
    preferred application for files of that type. xdg-open supports
    file, ftp, http and https URLs."

It appears to be broken: if it's fed a URL of any type, it opens it in
the browser...which may account for Chrome not being able to open a
mailto: link with Thunderbird. Or perhaps Chrome has simply lost the
ability to open mailto links using an installed MUA.

Can Chrome itself be configured to open mailto: links by passing them to
Thunderbird?

///Peter